


Aquatic Nocturne

by Ostentatious_Penguin



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Fluff and Angst, Hannibal Lecter Loves Will Graham, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Introspection, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, M/M, Murder Husbands, Postmodernism, Tags Are Hard, Time Travel, Will Graham Loves Hannibal Lecter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-02-09 23:19:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12898992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ostentatious_Penguin/pseuds/Ostentatious_Penguin
Summary: Will falls with Hannibal into the ocean’s embrace, hoping to end their life, together. But time is whimsical, and has a habit of mending shattered teacups when he least expects it.AKA a time-travel au with a twist because why not





	1. deep in liquid indigo

 

 

“It’s beautiful,” Will confessed to Hannibal’s thundering heart whilst possessive arms tightened its hold around his waist.

                                    

Instinctively.

 

Triumphantly.

  

_Lovingly._

 

It was a fulcrum moment.

 

However, Will felt mournful. Because he knew of the inevitable - that this was not sustainable. They were unsustainable. By nature, monsters were supposed to be solitary creatures, confined to fairytales or under the beds of fearful children. Never to have become alive in the moonlight, proudly showcasing humanity peeled back to pearly white bone marrow, as tar-like blood coated twitchy fingers and glinting teeth.

 

Revealing haunting savagery in their wakening.

  

Beauty gained from cruelty. The aftermath of an animalistic dance of blood and breath.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A younger and an infinitely more naïve Will wouldn’t have predicted such an outcome. Holding onto his anger and flaming sword of justice, he would have instead been recklessly battling the devil who’d pried open his mind and rearranged the furniture of his thoughts. Unaware that he was holding a double-edged weapon which Will was also driving into himself. Through his ribcage, and into his still-beating heart.

 

  _Or perhaps not completely unaware_ , Will thought, recalling his tug of war of emotions towards Hannibal, evident through his continual somnambulant dreams of antlers piercing skin, even after being treated for encephalitis. Perhaps he had known all along. At least unconsciously. That no matter how much he believed he was struggling to escape the forceful bindings of manipulation, the truth was that they were never strong to begin with. Hannibal had just nurtured the inklings of darkness he’d found in Will’s skull.

 

After all, Hannibal’s predictions did come true. In the end, Will indeed turned out to be similar to him, the opposing side of the same coin, a diametrically inverted mirror image, and any other analogies which he currently didn’t have the stamina to care about. For the extended metaphors were extraneous. What truly mattered now was how, at par with Hannibal’s hopes and expectations, Will, reduced to his basest form, was no less of a monster than Hannibal.

  

And he had relished it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hence, we return to our current tableau.

 

Will and Hannibal, two blackened figures standing near the edge of a cliff, entwined in flesh as they were in soul. In a game of brinkmanship. Wholly isolated from the world in their microcosm of content. But not alone.

  

Once, they were psychiatrist and unofficial patient. ( _Chesapeake Ripper and the unstable profiler who empathized with murderers.)_ Then they were teacher and prodigy, betrayed and betrayer. And this was their final form - the conjoined lovers. Relationship consummated by the slaying of a burgeoning dragon, defined by blood and blinding understanding.

  

However, what were to come next?

 

After the dragon had been slain and the knight finally rescued the princess, should they be living happily ever after in a castle, to the blessings of the kingdom?

  

No, not a chance.

 

 _Try something more realistic_ , Will forcefully reminded himself, _this wasn't a fairytale_.

  

There were no ‘once upon a times’. A happy ending for two serial killers, one satisfied at having acquired what they coveted all along, and the other, conflicted due to their appreciation of the beauty within horror, were too terrible of a thought. Unsustainable. In this world, evil couldn't coexist with good.

 

 _“_ Can’t live with him. Can’t live without him,” Bedelia’s impassionate voice echoed tauntingly in his mind.

 

But her words were didactic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In a split-second, Will had decided upon his last act of betrayal. His final attempt to save the world from their becoming. His awed confession became his Judas kiss, as he pulled himself and Hannibal off the cliff where the lovers fell into the freezing embrace of the Atlantic.

 

And…

  

 

An…

 

 

A..

 

 

..

 

 

..

 

 

.

 

 

.

 

 

.

 

 

 

(And for an intrusive second, Will felt what seemed to be a stab of regret for discarding their opportunity to live together, but he dismissed it to be the sting of saltwater entering his wounds. He didn’t let go of the other, even as the two descended into darkness.)

 

  

 

_deep in liquid indigo_

_turquoise slivers_

_of dilute light -_ Sylvia Plath, **Aquatic Nocturne**

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it started to get postmodern and weirdly introspective for some reason but hey it works. Tune in next time where we eclipse notions of time and the laws of physics and Will gets a do-over which is basically my dreams of what could have been but never actually happened canonically in Hannibal. Talk about sad reacc.
> 
> Also, this is my first Hannibal fic/ first fic on ao3 so much excite. Comments or kudos will be very much appreciated. ☺ 
> 
> I’m out.


	2. turquoise slivers of dilute light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will jolted into consciousness.

 

 

You are standing near the edge of the cliff, looking down. You watch the waves dash itself against the rocks repeatedly as it is trapped between the continual gravitational pull of the sun and moon. The din is deafening. It sounds like glass splintering in the night, or perhaps the phantom echo of a thousand porcelain teacups, falling and helplessly shattering on the pristine kitchen floor.

 

You wonder how it would feel to plunge head-first into the rolling Atlantic. Whether death would arrive quickly, as your bones fracture against the rocks, or if dying would be slow and incremental as you are gently pulled into the lull of the abyss. These questions are provocative. Curiously morbid. They steer you away from the insidious thoughts which slither into your mind, insinuating how it must have felt for the others to stand at the same spot you are right now. How it must have felt for your predecessors: Miriam Lass, and Abigail Hobbs.

 

 

Your Pandora’s box.

 

 

Even without opening that chest named Abigail, you are aware of what you’d find inside.

 

The sight of shivering pupils contrasted against ghostly pale sclera. A mouth frozen into a scream. Rivulets of blood like tears escaping from a precisely slit throat.

 

In the past, when the cut was still bitterly fresh in your mind, it had whispered to you, lamenting the dreams of another world where it didn’t exist. Where underneath there was nothing but a thin scab, singular and unfinished, the reminder of a nightmare. But sometimes the wound had also been accusatory. _You should have left when we were supposed to,_ it screamed from beneath your eyelids, _why did you just keep on lying?_

What it hadn’t said was: I’ve been betrayed by all my fathers.

 

Those words are redundant.

 

 

 

 

 

If possible, the movements of the tide become more frantic, the crashes now sound like peals of thunder. "The cliff is eroding," you recall someone saying but their voice is muffled as if they are speaking underwater.

 

(Soon everything will be lost to sea.)

 

 _It would be so easy to wait_ , you think, _with a quiet sense of anticipation, to slay the dragon, and glut on the taste of iron in your mouth that is not your own._ For the sense of wholeness within twoness. For the careful predictions to be proved true, for the tender puppet strings to be manoeuvred to the conclusion of the act, and afterwards towards uncertainty. Tabula rasa.

 

However, you know that once all the dominoes have fallen, there is no possible option to return to when they were upright. And it’s the frisson of fear that causes your hands to move on their own.

 

Wintry palms make contact with a warm chest. A shove. There is a sharp flicker of surprise, anguish and perhaps a modicum of amusement before everything abruptly ends. In front of you, there is nothing. An absence in a previously occupied space. No shadows, no subtle smugness. It should feel like time rewound or time renewed but it doesn't and deep down, you recognise why - it had always been all or nothing. Two minds for the price of one.

 

 You're conjoined.

 

Even though it is _him_ who has fallen to the kiss of the treacherous ocean, you have the strange feeling of a sudden lack of footing, of nothing but air rushing beneath you, of the wind tearing at your face, of the roar of the ocean and-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Will jolted into consciousness.

 

The first thing he was aware of was the complete sensation of dampness, glued to his exposed skin, and buried in his hair and jacket, causing a gelid chill to slide into his bones. This was all too familiar. The disorientation, steady spear of rain and frantic heartbeat. The threatening loom of Hannibal’s house, prowling on the quiet neighbourhood street. Around him, wind wailed into his eardrums, so maudlin and incessant that Will wondered if the sound would ever end. He wished for it to all disappear. For him to return to the silence at the stygian depths of the ocean where warmth from another body bled into his skin.

 

Will glanced down, and saw a familiar yet foreign sight.

 

A gun clasped in his trembling hands. For a considerable moment, he imagined how the cool metal would be like, pressed to his temple, and whether he would feel powerful pulling the trigger one last time. If someone else would have to reconstruct his emotions and intentions in the violent tableau which would be the aftermath of his death. But then again, perhaps not. Considering the possibility that this was hell - his punishment for delighting in murder. That, or hypothermia and blood loss had provoked a starkly realistic hallucination of memories which Will made sure would only feature in his nightmares, up until this point. Either way, it didn't matter.

 

Will ran.

 

He found Alana’s broken body at the doorstep, the slivers of shattered glass, framing her figure as a wreath. Placing his jacket over her, he dialled for an ambulance. Ignoring Alana’s moth-like breathing and futile attempt at warning him, Will’s tense footsteps entered Hannibal’s house.

 

 

  

The tomb of darkness swallowed him alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Though I never really plan for what to write, there was not supposed to be this much angst. The angst bunny, that wily little creature, just happened to escape from my grasp, but don't you worry. I'll catch him someday.
> 
>  
> 
> Kudos inspire hope in Will for a different ending in Mizumono. Comments comfort dream/hallucination/alternate reality Hannibal by telling him that it wasn't Will but the wind that pushed him off the cliff.
> 
> Happy readings!


End file.
